Horror Month: Top Five Cult Horror Movies

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This October we’re celebrating “Horror Month” on the Full Sail Blog. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for a series of features and interviews celebrating the best in horror entertainment.

Everyone has their own favorite scary movies, but we recently checked in with one of our resident horror experts on staff for his recommendations on the best films to watch in the evenings leading up to Halloween. Michael Ferraro is the course director for our Literary Techniques and Storytelling class, as well as a contributing writer to the horror site Bloody Disgusting.

Mike sat down with us to give suggestions for hosting your own horror movie marathons this month – broken down into classic, modern, and cult picks. We kicked off Monday with classic horror favorites, followed it on Wednesday with contemporary horror, and finish the series today with his top five choices for cult horror films that are just a little outside the mainstream.

1. Audition (1999, dir: Takashi Miike)

Not since Hitchcock has a filmmaker crafted such a slow burn, tense nightmare about a widowed man trying to get himself back out there. The results are deeply disturbing.

2. Re-Animator (1985, dir: Stuart Gordon)

This inspired vision of the gross and strange takes an H.P. Lovecraft story and turns it up to 11.

3. Dead Alive (1992, dir: Peter Jackson)

Before he took us on a long journey through Middle Earth, director Peter Jackson was covering us with buckets of blood. This is his gory (and hilarious) masterpiece.

4. Let the Right One In (2008, dir: Tomas Alfredson)

Released the same year as Twilight, this quiet vampire tale not only terrifies, it’s actually touching as well. It also proves that having a vampire for a friend is a huge benefit to thwart bullying.

5. Zombie (1979, dir: Lucio Fulci)

Have you ever seen an underwater fight between a zombie and a shark? It’s just as glorious as you’d expect, as is the rest of this Italian answer to Dawn of the Dead.